


The Erlenmeyer Flask

by scullywolf



Series: TXF: Scenes in Between [24]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 01:45:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4503027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullywolf/pseuds/scullywolf





	The Erlenmeyer Flask

_(13 days after Deep Throat’s death)_

Hospital: 1 day  
Medical leave: 5 days  
Administrative leave: 7 days

They were never given any explanation as to why they were put on leave. After the second day, Scully had stopped trying to get any answers and booked a flight to California, saying she might as well take the opportunity to visit her brother if she wasn’t going to be allowed to work. Mulder laid low, still recovering, and waited for the other shoe to drop.

There was also never an official investigation into Deep Throat’s murder. Mulder had initially feared that Scully would be framed for the shooting, but as time passed without any word on the matter, he supposed that charging her would have required the sort of exposure that the people for whom his contact had worked would prefer to avoid at all costs.

Finally, their leave was due to end. Scully was flying back to Washington, and Mulder was getting ready to start back at work the next day. But when his phone rang around six o’clock that evening, he knew it was time for that other shoe.

There was absolutely no way that anything good could come of getting called in to Skinner’s office after hours, the night before he was supposed to return to work. If he was lucky, he would walk out of there with some sort of official reprimand. Maybe he and Scully would be assigned a stint of desk duty (not that they’d be able to investigate many X-Files from behind a desk). He didn’t  _think_  Skinner would call him all the way in just to fire him, especially after all of the people from HR would have gone home for the night.

In the end, it was worse than all of that.

They were taking Scully away from him. They were taking the X-Files, and they were taking Scully, and there was not a single thing he could do about any of it. 

He left his car in the Bureau garage and walked the six blocks to his bar of choice. It had been several months since he’d had occasion to go there, but news of this magnitude called for loud music and a lot of whiskey,  _especially_  if he was going to have to break the news to Scully. He ordered two shots up front and asked the bartender to keep them coming.

He’d almost quit. When Skinner had told him, he’d almost dropped his badge on the table right there and then. It was only when Skinner said they weren’t going to make him go back to working in Behavioral Science that he’d changed his mind, decided that he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of running him out of town on a rail. He could do this surveillance gig, do it  _just_  well enough to not get fired, and not a bit better.

Two shots turned into four, which turned into eight. The bartender cut him off and called him a taxi, and he stood unsteadily on the curb until it arrived. He sat with a plop in the cab’s back seat and pulled the door shut.

“Where to?”

 _Scully. She’ll be home by now_. “Uh, Georgetown please.”

“You got it.”

They were several blocks along before he looked at his watch again and somehow had the presence of mind to reconsider. He probably shouldn’t show up unannounced on Scully’s doorstep at 11pm, especially when she’d spent the whole day traveling. She was bound to be exhausted. Phone. Phone would be better. He leaned forward in his seat.

“Actually, uh, you know what? Better make that Alexandria. Yeah. Let’s go to Alexandria.”


End file.
